


you ask me about love and i tell you about violence

by polybios



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Meta, like mostly meta i really think about the doctor's feelings a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:00:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28707801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polybios/pseuds/polybios
Summary: a time lord and a dalek, the last of their species. who knew such conditions would change them like this?follows season one episode six, dalek. nine hundred generation's worth of trauma all fit into one gay little doctor
Relationships: The Doctor (Doctor Who) & Rose Tyler
Kudos: 4





	you ask me about love and i tell you about violence

When the Doctor first stepped into the room, he felt curiosity. Regular, old, run-of-the-mill curiosity. He dealt with species like this all the time. Trapped, fearful, at the hands of their captor, waiting for anyone to rescue them.

And he even saw the bright blue dot stark against the room’s shadows. Talked to it, soothed it, told it to “not be afraid” anymore, he was there now. He was willing.

And then it asked for his name. And then, his blood ran cold. The icy feeling spreading from the tips of his fingers and toes down to the core of his being. Nine-hundred years of time and space, thousands of millions of species and battles, and he still felt fear. The Doctor understood love, and in return he understood hate. He was brave and yet he was afraid.

Rose responded just as she would ever, of course. She was naive, and he envied her for that. Knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss. Perhaps she would’ve felt the same as he if there were a bear at the corner of that room. But bear, ravens, dinosaurs, whatever may be would never compare to something such as that. A Dalek is not a bear, a raven, a dinosaur. A Dalek is a gun. Smooth and pristine, perfect to a deadly point. Like a machine-gun would, a Dalek does not pick and choose who to spare and who to kill, a Dalek destroys everything in its path.

It’s not as if a Dalek doesn’t care, even. That’s the more terrifying part. To something like that, something the Doctor couldn’t even call a creature (a word that implies sentience and life), everything is worth killing. And that was why they almost won. No Time Lord that died died randomly. It was chosen, a sentient action, with precision behind it. Like a human firing a gun.

And that, well that made the Doctor see red.

Maybe, maybe a small part of him could seek forgiveness, if the Time War was even in part an accident. Maybe he could understand if they were robots, destruction a part of their own programming. Something that was within their own nature, they couldn’t help it, nobody could blame them. But that would be a blatant, big fat lie, and every single higher being in the universe knows that.

But oh, there goes Rose. Pretty, young Rose. She talks to it, even attempts, in some part, to reason with it. Not particularly surprising; what he loves about humans most is their almost self-destructive need to care. What shocked him was the act it seemed to put on. Meek, dying, the last of its kind. Wanting to die, even.

All alone in this universe, and willing to die companionless.

What a sob sorry, but not one that was unfamiliar.

Now, what really gets the Doctor, really gets him truly, is everything that comes after its escape. It still marches on with the same path of blood like he expected it would. The senseless killing, people who had lives and families and love all gone in the blink of an eye. All of that is usual, for a Dalek.

What is truly unusual, is the way it almost begins to act normal. Rose tames it, like a wild beast who simply needed a master to follow. It stops, hesitates for a moment unlike any other machine. And then, it wants. It doesn’t want to kill, it doesn’t want to live. It protects Rose, just as the Doctor himself would.

Seeing a Dalek once more after the Time War had sobered him up, sure. But the Doctor did not know fear until at one moment, he feared himself. Rose feared him, more than she feared the Dalek.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, there was a short moment where he was more violent than a Dalek. That red-hot rage, something that seared his skin and made the blood in his every vein boil, it blinded him. What scared him was the idea that he had something in common with this creature, this thing that he watched destroy his home and everyone he thought he had ever known and loved. He wanted to save the lives of his companions more than ever, and yet there was the part of him that wanted to kill. To make a pimple hurt before it popped. Killing to save, and yet killing just to kill.

He had to step back, the look in Rose’s eyes told him more than enough. He was the human firing a gun now, the sentient being with a purpose to destroy. And he had to stop.

The Dalek was almost emotive at this point. Showing itself like a cat showing its belly to their owner. Vulnerable was the word here, all while the Doctor himself felt seen. It wanted to die. It saw life, it felt what emotions were after being cold-blooded for its entire existence. And it suffered, it cried, just as any life-form in this universe would do. Just as a human would do.

Just like that, it popped right out of existence. Out of its own will to die. They had defeated the monster, just like they did every other time and place they went to. But the Doctor felt empty. Nine-hundred years of time and space and for the first time, he felt challenged. He survived solely for the purpose of surviving. To live just to see what life had to offer. And honestly? He was content with that. With his spaceship, companions, aliens, and fish and chips, and whatever have you. But he’d never considered the possibility of dying.

The idea that, maybe after nine-hundred years of travelling around with no real purpose, dying was that purpose. Like the punctuation at the end of a sentence. Without that end, what was he here for?

It shook him to his very being. A feeling that left him cold and alone, not unlike a baby grabbing for the arms of its mother. A feeling that would rot him from the inside-out.

“Let’s go home, Rose.”


End file.
